Professor Dick Hardly
Professor Dick Hardly (voiced by Jeff Bennett) is Professor Utonium's old college roommate, who has leeched off of him instead of studying. It's revealed in flashbacks that Professor Dick is a womanizer. He appears to be around the same age as the Professor. His only appearance is actually in the episode "Knock It Off", where he is amazed over the girls' powers. He has wanted to make a profit off of them, but is sad when Professor Utonium angrily refuses and kicks him out. As a result, Dick comes up with a wicked plan: if he couldn't have the girls themselves, he would create his own and make billions. While picking them up from Pokey Oaks, he asks the girls how to create his own little girls. So, after learning the ingredients, Dick goes into an abandoned factory and creates the Powerpuff Girls Xtreme. However, his versions turn out to be cheap knock-offs and some of them are disfigured, horrible, ugly mutants as well. When the girls found out what Dick's true intentions were, they confronted him inside his lab and asked for the Chemical X back. But Dick deliberately swallows it and transforms into a monster. As a monster, Dick's size is increased a hundredfold, his skin turns green, spikes grow out of his shoulders, blue tentacles burst out of his chest, his ponytail turns into a tentacle, his normal glasses are gone, his eyes turn black (while acting similar to normal sunglasses), and the only bit of his clothing left are the remains of his pants. In this form, he easily defeated the girls as Utonium goes into the lab. Dick drains nearly all the girls' Chemical X and their life force, but the other Powerpuff Girls Xtreme realized that Dick never gave them love or care. So, in their anger, they sacrificed themselves to destroy him, and Utonium gets the girls out in the nick of time as the factory explodes, killing Dick in the process. As Dick dies before the factory is completely destroyed, Utonium bursts into tears at the loss of the girls. However, his fatherly love revives them. Delighted to see them alive again, he says "Old Dick may have gotten the formula right, but the only ingredient he forgot was LOVE. Let's go home girls." Then Dick screams "NO!" one final time as he's ambushed inside his lab one millisecond before he dies, and the factory is destroyed. Personality Dick Hardly lived by pretending to care about people as a way of getting whatever he wanted. He always tricked Professor Utonium into finishing his college work for him, while Dick would go hang out with people and flirt with women. Although Utonium always viewed Dick as a friend, his ex-colleague exploited him so that he didn't have to get anything done by himself. After many years, Dick called up Professor Utonium to once again take credit for doing everything for him. Dick also acted the same way towards the Powerpuff Girls. He pretended to be nice to them, in order to gain a sample of Chemical X and create his Powerpuff Girl Xtreme. Dick made it appear like he wanted to rid the world of all crime. However, inside of the evil factory, he was seen being a completely different person: An evil, cruel, tyrannic, slave-driving, vicious sadist who only wanted money and had no remorse for cheating people. Despite appearing only once in the 1998 series and never in the various spin-offs or the 2016 series, Dick Hardly is among the franchise's most memorable villains. This is because he's the only member of the PPG Rogues Gallery who has absolutely no redeeming or comedic qualities. Most villains have lines they will never cross. However, Dick is ruthless enough to kill anyone in order to achieve his goals, even his own ex-friends. In fact, he actually manages to make HIM (who is nastier than Mojo Jojo) look like a saint in comparison. Trivia *He was one of the few characters to die, the others being Abracadaver, the Broccoloids, Bunny, the Gnome, and The Rowdyruff Boys (although the Boys were later revived by HIM). *As a human, Dick Hardly strongly resembles Dexter's Dad from Dexter's Laboratory. They have the same voice actor as well. *He appears similar to Kip Snip, a villain from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends also created by Craig McCracken. *His name is likely a reference to his unkind nature, as "Dick" is often used as a profane insult to describe unlikable people, particularly males * It's possible that Dick was partially inspired by the Spider-Man supervillain Jackal, due to both characters creating duplicates or clones of their respective enemies. * Dick Hardly cameos in the Villainous short "The Lost Cases of Boxmore". Category:Deceased Characters Category:Villains Category:One-Time Characters Category:The Powerpuff Girls (1998) characters Category:Characters voiced by Jeff Bennett Category:Humans Category:Characters